Students Left Holding Their Bags

There have been four home football games so far during the Eagles 2009 season. Starting with the third game at Alumni stadium this season, event staff, the people wearing the brightly colored jackets that say “Event Staff,” began enforcing an Alumni Stadium policy on bags and purses that had not previously been enforced in my own personal experience.

This policy prevents students from bringing in purses or bags, while allowing the general public to bring in both.

There had not been an e-mail sent out about a new student policy, so I contacted Matt Conway, assistant athletics director of operation, asking when students were informed of this policy. “Students were first informed via an email blast when we instituted the bag check policies prior to the 2008 Football Season,” Conway said.

Interestingly enough, this policy is not listed on BC’s website under “Stadium Policies,” nor are purses or bags listed on the “Prohibited Items” list for Alumni Stadium.

This policy, however, can be found on the Boston College Athletics website, in the Boston College Football A-Z Guide, under “Bags and Bag Searches.” It’s not easy to find, so good luck if you go looking for it.

This is the policy as stated on the website: “To expedite your entrance into the facility, we recommend not bringing bags into Alumni Stadium. Student season ticket holders are not permitted to bring any bags into Alumni Stadium. General guests may bring bags into the stadium but all bags will be searched for prohibited items by stadium officials.”

Now, if this is not discriminating against Boston College students, I certainly don’t know what is. Why are students not allowed to bring bags into Alumni Stadium when the general public is allowed to? Do the bags of students really pose a much more significant risk than those of the general public? What is the rationalization behind allowing the general public to have bags or purses of any size while prohibiting students from having any bag or purse at all? Can event staff not just search the purses and bags of students, the same thing they do for the general public? Is it that much more of an inconvenience to search students’ bags and purses?

At the third home game (versus Wake Forest,) I asked an event staff person who turned away two girls with relatively small purses why students had been allowed into the stadium with bigger purses and bags the previous two games.

He answered with this: “I don’t make the rules, I just enforce them.” Apparently, he thought that was a sufficient answer. It is not, however, because there are several other problems with this policy, beside the fact that it is clearly discriminatory against students.

One of these problems is that this same event staff man said that they would allow students to have “clutches” in the stadium. First of all, who defines the size of a “clutch?” Secondly, if student “clutches” are actually allowed in the stadium, why isn’t this stated online with the policy that prohibits purses and bags?

Another major problem with this policy is that it seems to be enforced whenever event staff so desires to enforce it. As was mentioned, this policy was not enforced the first two home games, yet it was enforced the third home game…. for the most part. There were still students in the student section of Alumni stadium with bags significantly larger than a “clutch,” yet there were other students that had been told by event staff that they would have to take their bags back to their dorms or apartments before they could gain admission to the game.

The event staff man who turned away these two girls showed no mercy even when the one girl told him she lived on Newton Campus.

The interesting thing is that these two girls both gave their purses to a woman who entered as general public, and she proceeded to hand them their purses once inside.

Don’t you find it a little odd that someone in the general public can enter the stadium with three purses and yet students can be turned away for having one?

In the most recent home game against the Florida State Seminoles, again, there were students with bags much larger than “clutches.”

Maybe the event staff did not feel like enforcing the policy because of the rain, maybe it just depends on what event staff person you are dealing with or maybe it depends on how convincing you are since clearly some students are allowed in with their bags and purses while others are not.

The question at the heart of this article: Why does this policy not apply to the general public? When I asked Matt Conway this question, he responded, saying, “Boston College students have access to their dorm room for storage of personal belongings. Many of the general public, who arrive via public transportation mainly the “T,” do not have this luxury and thus are permitted to bring bags into the stadium once they have been searched by event staff.”

Considering the time it would have taken that girl to take her purse all the way back to Newton Campus, she may as well have just skipped the football game. Not every student lives in dorms on main campus.

I’ll leave it up to you to decide if Conway’s answer is good enough to explain this double standard, but word of advice to BC students: your chance of getting into Alumni Stadium with a bag or purse is 50/50 on any given Saturday. If you get turned away, just find an approachable person in the general public. There is no limit on how many bags they can bring in.

Related Articles: